stalls at DMI pool

My Windows 7 system stalls when it boots and never finishes. The BIOS seems to load OK and it recognizes the devices (HDD, CDROM) but right after that is stalls with the message "Verifying DMI pool data". I have tried booting from a windows 7 and Linux Mint distro. and they do the same.

Is this an indication the motherboard is the problem?


Thanks